Hi
Been off photography and especially the computer side for a while after Aperture & Apple files lost.
Posted some time ago as disaster.
One thing that came out of the teeth gnashing was my rose tinted longing for the old days.
Not really just kidding, have you looked at your old 35mm trannies recently? What is the chemical smell? etc adnauseam.
BUT that box under the bed full of processed films was reliable. A spinning disk in a vacuum or ssd with a finite read write time IS NOT.
Just my opinion. So I had a knee jerk reaction called Blue Ray. Michael commented at the time that this was not archival and I agreed.
But what is archival? A day,a month, a year or 1000 years.
This is what I did and continue to do.
Buy branded 25GIG only single layer discs that have some claim for longevity. Look for supplies and pricing especially here in the UK.
Handle like you would that Hanemhule print. Use standard full size jewel cases that do leave a half mm gap between disc and case top and bottom.
Store upright, in my case Lietz cardboard archival boxes in a Peli hard case before putting under the bed!!haha
I bought an external blue Ray burner by LG almost a year ago specifically as I had read about M DISC. These burners were not available in the UK retail outlets so I contacted an Amazon trader who was very helpfull and imported shedloads from Germany. Apple never supported Blue Ray and all the apps for using BR were err rubbish, but the OS burned these discs just like DVDs. Only the eject was more reliable using the finder rather than trash.
It is a usb3 device and I am using a 2008 MacPro desktop with a usb3 added device. I love a computer that you can add to.
Well it does not like the LG so I record using as a usb2. Takes around 40min a disc.
I use a check sum app, Image Verifier and it does weed out duff files. Use before burning and after.
The only failure was when trying the usb3, after that all discs were a success. I date them as I go on and will test them against the check sum data base every 6 months until I get bored. I am confident that they will be readable in 10 years or I will jump off the edge. I hope for 20 years. Much better than the electronic storage which of course we all use for speed and usability.
This is a disaster recovery solution for me. Not a working data base. The LG and the MacPro will not be scrapped or sold but maintained with cloned software backups and be purely an archival solution, woken up every now and then. Not updated to the latest super iphone OS, clouds on the horizon anyone?
Aperture is no longer developed by Apple and works better than ever.